Notebook Purge

This post is coming out quickly after my last one, Grey Christmas. As per tradition, I'm packing in some posts right near the end of the year to buff my anual post count.

As I mentioned in a previous post, I keep a notepad on my phone with suggestions for blog updates. Sometimes time moves forward, I get busy, other things happen, and the suggestions get outdated. I don't delete them from my phone though, so I've got suggestions dating from back to around last December. As a way of cleansing my phone notepad for the new year, I'm just going to blast through them on here, and explain why I wrote them down in the first place.

Luna Grieving Post

Starting off kind of depressing. Last December, a beloved family cat named Luna passed away. I did post about her passing, but I think I spoke on it closely after her death. I wanted to make another post that was more reflective, after the initial sting had worn off a bit. As of now, I think it would be a little inappropriate to do an in-depth grieving post, since so much time has passed.

If you don't remember, she was one of the cats that lived in Guelph with my mother and brother. She was eleven years old, while their other two cats were sixteen (now seventeen). We usually have two cats of different age groups, so that the younger cat can motivate the older one to have a bit more energy. The plan was to adopt another cat after Thor and Blackavar passed away to keep Luna company in old age. We had never lost a cat unexpectedly before, so when she developed rapid kidney failure, it was a real shock.

Luna and Thor were both adopted before I started Canada World Youth. During the time between my return and the start of college, me and Luna really hit it off and she became sort of "my cat" between the three. After getting into college and living more often away from home, she developed a special relationship with my mother.

Since then her passing, Mom and Duncan adopted a new cat, a little female grey tabby named Cassidy, to keep the older ones company. Although you can never replace a relationship, Mom and Cassidy have found a similar closeness.

Like I said, I won't do a full grieving post, but I'll leave you with this thought: There are books and movies made about the stories of dogs that have passed, Marley and Me, Where the Red Fern Grows, Old Yeller but not only are there pretty well no stories written about the passing of cats, when I was sad about Luna's passing, people seemed to think the magnitude of my grief was inappropriate and unhealthy. When a dog passes, it's often seen as a tragedy, while a grieving cat owner is labeled a crazy cat person. I still don't regret my response to the news of Luna's unexpected passing.

Fixed Table/Dresser Drawer/Walk-In Closet Door Knob

This one is really not important anymore. The title basically describes the content. I guess I still have the table and dresser drawer, which moved with us, but I left the walk-in closet door knob at the old townhouse. We can add a storm door handle to this list, although I screwed up the installation of that, and Lee-Anne's parents helped put in a new one. My bedroom door handle was also a replacement out of my own pocket. I was tempted to take all my door handles when I moved, since they're my property and it would just be one more final indication to my former landlord about how I viewed our professional relationship, but with the stress of moving, that just became a really low priority and I wound up leaving them behind.

Drawer vs Shelf

I've made a post about how Lee-Anne thinks I pronounce a lot of words wrong like: palm, calm, sriracha, and finicky. Well, it turns out I never really bothered to draw a distinction between the words drawer and shelf. So she's found it kind of difficult to offer directions around the kitchen when I treat the two words as synonymous. To her credit, I think she's right about this. A shelf is a flat surface that you stack stuff on, commonly seen inside a cupboard, while a drawer is a container that you roll out and put stuff in. I'm sure none of you needed that clarification.

Meal Post

Don't really know what to put here. For awhile, back in the first wave of the pandemic, I was making regular meal updates. People were cooking from home way more, and their eating habits were changing. I was personally focusing more on foods that were frugal, had a strong shelf life, and were nutritious. People also had time to make food that took longer to prepare, an example being the COVID baking trend. People have chilled out a bit in the second wave, even though our numbers are worse.

Nowadays when I want to post something food related, I just post to my Gryphood blog: https://gryphood.blogspot.com/

Netflix

I couldn't log into my Netflix account, but they kept charging me. Eventually I called them, and when I gave them my email to confirm, they said it wasn't what they had in their system, and asked me if I had a nickname. I said I hadn't. I asked them what email was attached to my account and they wouldn't tell me. I only use one email account for everything outside of work, so it's not like I accidentally used a different one. They mentioned that I hadn't used my account in a long time. So even if somebody somehow stole my account and attached a different email to it, they never used the account or changed it to a better service. Weird.

Mission: Rescue Succulent

On my first birthday after getting my job at WALES, one of the main office staff members dropped by our buiding and offered all of us a succulent. Since then, mine is the only one to have survived to this point. After looking it up, the plant I received is a jade plant, and it represents good fortune in terms of wealth. You're not supposed to water them more than once every two weeks, so I chose to water it every payday, because it's a wealth plant, and it makes sense to nourish it when money is coming in.

When the pandemic started,I realized that my succulent would be left to starve. It felt very dangerous to go to the office, but I steeled myself and made the journey to WALES. Once there, I realized that one of my coworkers had a coffee plant that was left behind. I had wanted the mission to be totally covert, but I couldn't leave the coffee plant to die. If I took the coffee plant with me, I would have to admit to my coworker that I had taken her plant, and entered the office to do so. In the end, my compassionate side made me rescue both my succulent and her coffee plant, and I wound up admitting to her that I had taken it. She was grateful, and once the first wave had ended and she was able to return to in-person work, I returned the plant to her desk.

...Actually, now that I think about it, we just entered the Grey Zone and nobody is doing in-person work again... I might have to go on Mission: Rescue Coffee Plant soon.

Tiger King, Animal Crossing, Takeshi 6ix 9ine

These are some "COVID Culture" topics that occured during the first wave.

Tiger King was a documentary on Netflix about the strange world of big cat owners that trended during the first wave of the pandemic. The lead character was Joe Exotic, a man who convinced two heterosexual men to marry him by coercing them with drugs and other privileges. He had a vicious rivalry with a woman named Carol Baskins, who is widely thought to have killed her ex husband to enherit his wealth and tiger sanctuary.

Between this and two tigers being found to have developed COVID-19, I went though a bit where I worried that people would link the tiger symbolism with China, and since the virus was first found in Wuhan Province, use this as a reason to be racist. I even worried that this would turn into feline hate in general, and so I made sure to stock up on cat food. In fact, I bought enough cat food that Kieran still had some in stock when I moved to my new place. He had more food than I did.

Animal Crossing is a video game where you exist in a world of animal people. You have a house, pay off a mortgage, build and decorate a better home. You get to know the villagers, make friends with them, influence who stays and who moves out. You fish, collect bugs, dig for fossils. It's all pretty calm, pretty chill. It came out at just the right time, because it's the game where you go outside and hang out with your friends, which was exactly what people were missing in real life when it came out.

Takeshi 6ix Nine is a rapper. He made a deal to get out of jail far in advance to his initial status by snitching out some of his fellow gang members. Once COVID hit, he was put into house arrest because they were trying to cut down on crowding in jails. On he was "out", he started putting out singles. They had to move him several times because his guady lifestyle would put him at risk of being tracked down.

I guess I mostly took notice because I reall don't understand what makes him popular. He is a young man whose rapper name is Japanese while he is Hispanic, hus symbol is a gay icon while he's heterosexual, and he has tattooed the symbol of a sex position all over himself.

Well, that's all I got. I have a few more notes, but they are far closer to current events and I will address them in the very new future. I hope you all have a good 2021!